Liberty. It’s a simple idea, but it’s also the linchpin of a complex system of values and practices: justice, prosperity, responsibility, toleration, cooperation, and peace. Many people believe that liberty is the core political value of modern civilization itself, the one that gives substance and form to all the other values of social life. They’re called libertarians.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

McGurn: John McCain Saw It Coming

McGurn: John McCain Saw It Coming

In 2008, the GOP nominee warned that an Obama foreign policy would be naïve—and dangerous for America.

By WILLIAM MCGURN

On
the ballot, the two candidates for president in 2008 were Sens. John
McCain and Barack Obama. Even so, Mr. Obama largely refused to run
against Mr. McCain. On those occasions he deigned to acknowledge his
rival's existence, he presented the Arizona Republican as little more
than a Bush clone.
Now we are entering the final weeks of the 2012 campaign. As we saw
during the Monday debate in Boca Raton, Fla., once again President Obama
is campaigning against his opponent as a Bush retread. The bet seems to
be that whatever his own policy shortcomings, the American people will
overlook them if he can characterize the alternative as a return to the
Bush years.
In 2008 that proved a winning strategy. It worked because that
election occurred against a backdrop that underscored the price of the
Bush foreign policy. Weary of two wars abroad (not to mention a
devastating flood and a financial crisis at home), American voters were
not inclined to inquire too deeply about an attractive new candidate who
promised to bring our troops home, talk to our enemies instead of
invading them and restore our reputation abroad.

Now that backdrop has changed. Mitt
Romney alluded to that in the debate when he spoke about what he sees
when he looks at what's happening around the world: "Iran four years
closer to a bomb"; "the Middle East with a rising tide of violence,
chaos, tumult"; "Syria with 30,000 civilians dead and [President Bashar]
Assad still in power"; "North Korea continuing to export their nuclear
technology"; Russia backing out of its commitment to a joint program to
destroy nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Mr. Romney's message:
If we're paying a price in the world in 2012, it isn't because of George
W. Bush. It's because of President Obama.
Not least of Mr. Obama's promise in 2008 was that his policies were
practical and hard-headed. Indeed, the surge of troops he ordered for
Afghanistan seemed to confirm he was a new kind of Democrat. Of course
the deadline for withdrawal he set in the same speech announcing the
surge pointed to something we have since learned about Mr. Obama: The
toughest parts of his policy frequently serve as cover for the weakest,
in the same way that his aggressive use of drones has become a
substitute for, rather than an expression of, a muscular antiterror
policy.
Mr. Romney devoted much of the evening to talking about how nations
such as Iran "saw weakness where they had expected to find American
strength." In particular the president seemed to bristle when the
governor referred to his "apology tour" abroad. That was especially true
when Mr. Romney cited the line from an Obama speech in which the
president had said America had "dictated" to other nations.
Ironically, for all the heat and confusion over Benghazi in the
second debate, in this one Libya made only a brief appearance at the
beginning. Though the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens was mentioned,
Mr. Romney did not note that he was the first U.S. ambassador to lose
his life in the line of duty since our ambassador to Afghanistan was
killed during a kidnapping attempt in 1979.
Nor did Mr. Romney make any attempt to reprise his attack on the
White House response to Benghazi. He might have pointed out that far
from failing to recognize the gravity of the attack on our consulate,
the White House reaction suggests it recognized all too well what that
attack meant—at least in terms of their political narrative. That would
explain why they spent so much time blaming a YouTube video. Surely they
understood that an al Qaeda attack that claimed the lives of four
Americans on the anniversary of 9/11 exposed the full hollowness of Joe
Biden's claim: "Osama bin Laden is dead and General MotorsGM-2.68%
is alive."
All in all, Mr. Romney did a fair job of illuminating
the weaknesses of President Obama's foreign policy without coming
across as a man whose solution is to invade Iran. Then again, most of
what we heard last night from Mr. Romney in the third debate we heard
four years ago —from John McCain. Whatever his faults as a presidential
candidate, to read over the transcript from that first presidential
debate back in 2008 today is to realize that ¬almost all of what Mr.
McCain warned us about regarding Mr. Obama's foreign policy has come to
pass: the danger of setting specific withdrawal dates for our troops;
the naiveté of pledging to negotiate with leaders such as Castro,
Ahmadinejad and Chavez without first insisting on conditions; the threat
to Israel; going too light on Russia; the precarious situation in
Pakistan, and so on.
Too bad we wrote Mr. McCain off as a cranky George W. Bush. Because
he was trying to warn us that Mr. Obama would be the new Jimmy Carter.